Paul Dunbar

This week I really thought the group discussions we had on Wednesday where really beneficial. The group I was in talked a lot about the differences between Paul Dunbar’s “Ode to Ethiopia” and some of the other readings we read by Phillis Wheatly, Venture Smith, and Frances Harper. What I thought was had the biggest impact on the differences between the readings was the time period. Phillis Wheatly was wrote her poems and readings in the 1770s, while Paul Dunbar wrote his poems in the late 1980s and early 1890s. This is over 100 years in difference, and during that time period a lot happened, such as the emancipation proclamation, the civil war, and after the war, segregation. My interpretation from the readings from these authors is that there are two groups. Frances Harper was born to free parents, and never experienced slavery. The same goes with Paul Dunbar. In Venture Smith’s case, he was born in Africa, and enslaved by his own people and sold off to the Americans. Phillis Wheatly was also captured in Africa and sold to the Americans as a slave. So Smith’s and Wheatly’s memories and ideas on “the mother land” are not going to be the same as Dunbar’s and Harper’s. In addition Dunbar and Harper where born in the United States, and never went to Ethiopia, while both Smith and Wheatly were born in Ethiopia. I think that Dunbar’s poem “Ode to Ethiopia” was very jumpy and optimistic, the same way Saidiya Hartman was in “Path to Strangers”.